What is recorded here

Kilcornan holds eight rectangular plots arranged along a grass-covered street, a layout so regular it suggests deliberate planning rather than accidental scattering. The absence of a church or castle points to a modest residential community from the 17th or 18th century, perhaps the sixteen tenants still named in local tradition. Two streams bind the damp grassland at either end, giving the village a contained shape that aerial photography revealed only in 1970. It is easy to imagine people moving through that narrow street, carrying water, firewood or news between small houses divided into rooms.

In poorly drained grassland, bounded at E and W by two streams. Aerial reconnaissance in July 1970 (CUCAP BDN 73) revealed a well-preserved deserted village covering an area c. 300m NE-SW by 275m NW-SE. It consists of eight rectangular plots, situated on either side of a narrow grass-covered 'street'. This runs E-W through the 'village' and can be traced for a considerable distance to NW and SE. Each plot contains one or two houses, some with internal divisions. The 1st ed. of OS 6-inch map shows three roofed buildings in this area along with a section of the roadway. This and its regular layout, when coupled with the absence of a church, castle or other diagnostic features, suggest that it is of 17th/18th-C date. Furthermore, the area is also known locally as 'the sixteen tenants'. The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Galway Vol. II - North Galway'. Compiled by Olive Alcock, Kathy de hÓra and Paul Gosling (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1999). Date of upload: 05 August 2010 The monument was taken into Ownership under the National Monuments Acts 1930 to 2014 - National Monument 642.

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